Reflections

Being an avid freediver, water lover and creative type, I’ve arranged a collection of underwater photos to recall and share my earliest underwater experiences in Africa. The photos were taken in Tanzania from January – March 2014, a liminal time, juxtaposed of self and sea […]

Deep in the ocean blue I’m alone with my thoughts, Sinking into an abyss Falling towards the edge of something… A desolate path But I travel it anyway Part of me wants to turn back But I can’t I won’t […]

Free-falling in Dahab’s Blue Hole, drifting effortlessly into the deep, I stare straight ahead, mesmerizingly at the line slipping past, alone with myself and my thoughts, focusing on relaxing, equalizing, and sinking downwards without expending extra energy. Immersed in a […]

I‘m frozen, captivated by the giant, fluctuating mercurial creature before me, which appears to be dissolving into itself. The receding layered tenticals and a silken membrain coasts, radiantly along the surface of the languid waters. Known as a Rhopilema rhopalophora […]

Water is life’s matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water. – ALBERT SZENT-GYORGYI (DISCOVERER OF VITAMIN C) I approach a superb and mystical universe, rippling with animated sea goldies upon a wall of obscure and bulbous corals. Drowned colors range […]

Nothing is more fantastic than free-diving in the waters of my own beautiful homeland. Floating face down on the surface of Walden Pond, in the world I forcibly left behind, instructor, Nick Fazah, from East Coast Divers is by my […]

The sea falls down around me, then lifts me to the top of a coral wall. I gaze at the underwater landscape, a scene where novelty never declines, and am caught in a metamorphosis. The world passes away, while I […]

As the sun rays shine through, blue chromis viridis fish shimmer in the shifting shadows. I look at them, glinting and teaming with life, before remembering where I am. I inquire. The goal; to get at what’s so interesting about […]

Nearby is no one, while I descend, into the blue void below me. The mossy mooring, my only visual reference into the darkening, silty depth. I coast deeper into the shifting play of light, thoughts fade away and fears are left behind. In […]

I arrive at the emerald warrior of the sea, launched from its fortress of sand and stone with threatening fists of lightning, hovering humbly in readiness for a punch. Decorated with segmented, roving eyes, the vision they behold still unknown. […]

From ledge to ledge and reef to reef, I move slowly in the watery deep, where depth robs colors on descent and ancient rocks fade in silence. I pause and hover to gaze at a pufferfish, swimming unpuffed yet proud, with tiny fins and freckled […]

It takes a swift break from his scurry as I approach, the fancy face and frisked up forearms, brave and motionless for the camera. In the shallows of a glinting grey ocean, the gleaming creature under it’s tarnished roof starts scampering along as usual, its back […]

I‘m captured and held in place… a small, yet dazzling black saddle toby juxtaposed against a backdrop of unpolished coral. The ocean’s offering at the tail end of an adventurous drift dive off the coast of Bagamoyo. Africa’s rainy season […]

Submerged under a reef of coral with a tantalizing Moorish Idol. Now I get it, I really get why the Moors were glad to call this fish their own. The water flashes with a compressed body of black, white and yellow bands as it sails dramatically through the […]

A lionfish, unquestionably one of the most photogenic fish in the sea, with an eccentric, gaudy profile, elaborate, vibrant stripes and a cantankerous, unhurried demeanor, glides along the reef like an underwater kite. He’s beautiful, he’s dangerous and he knows […]

Dark shapes emerge from the underwater shadows and glide like underwater kites, curiously toward me. Each batfish slips rhythmically sideways, this way and that, fluttering ever so gracefully. Camera in hand, I swim alongside them as they watch me with […]